COLOMBO, Sri Lanka – Sri Lanka’s strong president Gotabaya Rajapaksa has declared a state of emergency for the second time in just over a month as his government faces large, ongoing protests over a deepening economic crisis.
The announcement came late Friday after a general strike shut down shops and businesses in the South Asian island country. Protesters outside the parliament building in Colombo, the capital, blocked the exits, trapping lawmakers for hours as police used water cannons and tear gas to disperse the protesters.
Protesters demand the resignation of Mr Rajapaksa and his older brother, Mahinda Rajapaksa, the Prime Minister, who have been accused of mismanaging the economy and driving Sri Lanka into bankruptcy. The country’s usable foreign exchange reserves have fallen to less than $50 million, according to the Treasury Secretary. Food prices are rising, hospitals are out of essential medicines and fuel shortages have led to prolonged power cuts.
The anger was felt outside parliament on Friday, where instead of passing a vote of no confidence from the opposition, lawmakers had spent days conducting a routine vote on a deputy chairman. The person who previously held the position had been re-elected after his resignation, only to resign days later, highlighting the dysfunction protesters say they are tired of.
For days, news reports had suggested that the president could offer the protesters a concession by asking the prime minister to resign. Those reports intensified on Friday night, but the prime minister’s cabinet denied that he had been asked to resign or that he intended to do so.
Instead, the president, a former defense minister accused of overseeing the atrocities during Sri Lanka’s long civil war, declared a state of emergency. The move gives security forces sweeping powers to arrest and detain people, and empowers the president to deploy both the military and police to quell protests.
A government spokesman, Mohan Samaranayake, said in a statement on Saturday that the protests “posed a serious threat to the safety of public life” and had “exacerbated the economic crisis”. He called the state of emergency “a short-term measure.”
In early April, the president declared a state of emergency on the eve of planned mass protests across the country. He also imposed a curfew on movements and detained hundreds of protesters. But Mr Rajapaksa withdrew the state of emergency days later.
The Sri Lankan Bar Association called on the president to revoke the latest state of emergency and “ensure that the fundamental rights of the people” are “protected and not violated by the state or its agents”. The US Ambassador, Julie Chung, wrote on Twitter that the “voices of peaceful citizens must be heard”.
Protests continued in Colombo and elsewhere on Saturday. “We are not deterred by these measures they are taking,” said Wasantha Mudalige, a 27-year-old university student who demonstrated in the capital.
The protesters have been largely disciplined and peaceful. They have mobilized across the country, sustaining an Occupy Wall Street-esque tent town outside the presidential office in Colombo for nearly a month, through summer heat and monsoon rains. At least one protester has been killed in police gunfire during the protests.
The president, the prime minister and other members of the Rajapaksa family, who have dominated Sri Lankan politics for years and hold various senior government positions, are the main target of the protestors’ anger. Protesters believe the family and others in Sri Lanka’s political elite have failed in a country still trying to escape the shadow of the civil war that ended more than a decade ago.
“People are on the streets calling on the Rajapaksa family to go home,” said the protester, Mr. muddy. “More people than the numbers who voted to elect this president are calling for his resignation. He has effectively lost his mandate.”
The economic crisis has been attributed to a shortage of foreign exchange and to deep tax cuts that the president implemented after taking office in 2019.
Sri Lanka soon struggled to repay its foreign debts. The coronavirus pandemic has hit the tourist-dependent country hard, depriving it of crucial money. Last month, the government suspended payment of its international debt. It runs on lines of credit from India for essential imports, including fuel, food and medicine.
Last month, a delegation from Sri Lanka met with representatives of the International Monetary Fund to discuss financial relief measures and debt restructuring. While the fund has promised support, officials and analysts say it will likely be months before tangible aid arrives.
Mujib Mashal contributed reporting from Dubai.
